


tangled up in blue

by getmean



Category: Papillon (2018)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Past Injury, Tenderness, all the good content i promise, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 10:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19424020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: It’s the pain that wakes him in the end. Not the sticky, humid night air, or the sounds of ten dozen half-mad men echoing through the ruins of the island.





	tangled up in blue

**Author's Note:**

> okay i am officially dipping my toe into papillion fic just like i've been meaning to for MONTHS, hope you enjoy!

It’s the pain that wakes him in the end. Not the sticky, humid night air, or the sounds of ten dozen half-mad men echoing through the ruins of the island. No, that sickly gnawing pain, like a toothache but worse in the way it curls over his hip, grinds down through all the sinews and bones of his knee. Like a big iron stake, red hot, pinning him through to the hard ground beneath his bedroll, and Louis struggles against it for a second, caught between sleep and true wakefulness. That moment before the world expands any larger than the confines of your own body, and his is so on fire that he snaps awake quicker than usual, desperate for an escape that doesn’t come. 

He gasps on soupy air, the pain twisting him, rendering him speechless even as his hands turn first into fists and then into claws, and the irony of all that pain is that it leaves him so immobile he can’t do anything but lie there and feel it. Can’t rub the cramp from his muscles himself, can’t drag himself up and attempt to straighten the leg that feels like it’s somehow curling in on itself. Bird legs, the knee snapping back into some grotesque V, but when he manages to lift his head to blink through the darkness he’s whole, untransformed, which makes the pain even more bitter. Louis knows that if he didn’t limp he could almost pass as unmarred, unhurt. He’d tried so hard to hide it from Papillon in that moment of reunion, days ago.

Of course he’d seen through it. He saw through everything.

Eventually the pain lessens just enough to release its stranglehold on Louis' lungs, and he makes a low noise of hurt, like a wounded animal, and feels Papillon stir at his side at the sound. A shifting in the darkness, his velvet black silhouette against the night, and then a broad, familiar hand lays itself on Louis' thigh, and his voice is rough with sleep when he murmurs, “Dega,” and then, “Louis.”

Louis opens his mouth, and only another noise of pain escapes. He can almost feel Papillon shake the sleep from his head; it’s there in his low grunt as he sits up, his hand squeezing once at Louis' thigh before he disconnects. And then, the flare of a match, touching close to the end of a cigarette first, of course, before Papillon hands it to Louis, who immediately and gratefully snatches it from him. Just a single drag from the cigarette has his head clearer, and he watches the vague outline of Papillon rise, and then make its way over to the table to light the cluster of candles there. Louis wants to see him by that light just as sorely as he doesn’t want to be seen in turn. He can only imagine the sight of himself; grey faced, sweating. Weak. He’s always hated the mismatch in their power, and what was once merely a crevice is now a gulf. Louis has never been so frail. Papillon has never been so strong.

“Tell me where you’re hurtin’.” Papillon murmurs, and his shadow is a spidery giant behind him, the candlelight flickering ghoulish in the hollows of his thin face as he crosses the room to sit back at Louis' side. 

“Where do you think?” He replies, the pain and the embarrassment making him snappish, ears burning as Papillon helps him into a sitting position, slumped against the stone wall. It’s cool at his back, damp through his shirt but it’s a welcome respite. Louis isn’t sure he remembers the sensation of being cold, not after years sweating it out in this half of the world, so any reminder is a welcome one. He takes the cup of water that Papillon hands him with a guilty thanks, and gulps it down; brackish and warm but sorely needed. 

Patient as ever, Papillon eases Louis' bad leg into his lap, his sweet face sleep-puffy and absent in the darkness; the face of someone who believes he’s unwatched. Louis watches him almost to spite that, examining every detail he can make out with his glasses perched a few impossible feet away on the low makeshift table. Watches him faithfully, single-mindedly, until Papillon yawns and then eases his thumbs into the muscle right above Louis' knee, and the pain presses him back against the wall, some impact-less blow. 

The pain is exquisite, breath-taking. If Louis had thought what had woke him was pain, then he didn’t know what he should call this creature. Papillon’s broad, strong hands easing the stiffness from the muscle, working his thumbs into the thick knot of scar tissue above Louis' knee. He can’t even make a noise; can only press the crown of his head to the rough, cool wall behind him and drift.

The painting he had made of Papillon swims out of the darkness, the candles guttering in a gust of warm air, and when they flare his eyes seem to follow Louis, small and pained and sweaty on the floor. He almost wants to shrink back from it, but finds himself transfixed as the pain swamps him and he inches further and further from the traitorous remains of his body. He’d painted it years ago, not long after he’d come to the island, not long after he’d accepted in some deep down part of himself that were was no way that anybody could survive five years in silence, not even Papillon. Driven by a fit of loneliness, by the need to _immortalise_ the man in whatever way he could; without pencil or paper he’d used burned wood from his fire, used paint made from plants, stripped the island bare until the painting was more alive than he had believed Papillon to be. Every night afterwards he had slept beneath that painting, and it hadn’t been enough but it had been all he had, all he believed he’d ever have, but now —

Papillon catches Louis' eye, gazing carefully up at him through his pale lashes as Louis raises his shaky hand to his mouth, taking a drag from his ailing cigarette. He wonders where the fervour that had driven him to make his mural has fled to; he supposes it’s atrophied just as his poor wasted leg has. He still feels it sometimes, the ghost of a sensation. It had been there when he’d seen Papillon again, it had been there when he’d kissed him for the first time in too many years to linger on. At that, Papillon hits a particularly tender spot in his soothing of Louis' leg, and he finds he can’t bite back the groan that it wrenches out of him. Up until that point he’d been good; able to bite back on the pain Papillon was bringing out in him, rendered dumb by it. Papillon’s blue eyes are black by the low light, rising up concerned until Louis flaps a hand at him and croaks, “Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t, because Papillon may be stubborn as a mule but he’s always been so easily swayed by Louis’ wants. 

“I don’t wanna hurt you.” He murmurs, voice low in the dark room, in the quiet of the night. Louis wishes he could say the silence is absolute, but the noises of the other inhabitants of the island always rise above that silence. Just them, the waves, and the rustle of the jungle. And now, a noise of pain, and Papillon’s soft, concerned voice. Louis doesn’t have it in him to tell him that he’s easing hurt with more pain. 

“I”m sorry I woke you up.” His leg twitches in Papillon’s lap, and he asks, “Are you tired?”

The candlelight is sporadic on the walls, lighting up the damp sheen on them, the humidity catching. Yellow and dim and, Louis thinks, oddly ancient. His cave painting a watchful eye above them both, the butterfly on Papillon’s chest seeming to writhe in the live light. If Louis glances down his body, he can see the real thing right there; flesh and blood, black and faded and precious over his breastbone.

“I’m not tired.” He says, and it’s a lie; Louis can tell by the twist of his mouth sideways after he speaks. He doesn’t pull him up on it, he doesn’t have the energy. The pain is receding just slightly, just enough to have his alertness waning slightly. He presses his head back against the cool, slick wall, eyes turning to the narrow slit of a window in the wall of the room he had made his own.

In the years since he had been shuffled off onto that boat in Paris, Louis has learned a number of things he’d never thought to in his years as a cushy, spoiled criminal. Things about nature, about the planet, all the dreadful and wonderful things that come alongside it, and as he had absorbed those lessons he found that he’s forgotten more and more about his life before all this. He eyes the quality of light beyond that narrow little slice of window, wondering at the hour. Four, maybe five, judging by the murky lightening of the sky beyond. Time has ceased to mean anything to him now. He thinks about how intently he used to watch the huge old grandfather clock that stood silent sentry in the hallway of his childhood home, sat on the bottom step of the large staircase as he counted down the seconds until his father came home from work. Six o’clock meant shouting, arguing, it meant him getting caught in the storm of his parents. He hasn’t seen the face of a clock in years — a decade, a lifetime. He would still be able to forge a bond in his sleep, he’s sure, but things such as _time_ have become such a foreign concept he’s sure that if shown the face of a clock, he’d be reduced to childlike stupidity.

More and more, time feels both like something that is falling through his fingers faster than he can keep up, and something stretching so far and endless before him that it leaves him short of breath. He knows he’s running out of time with Papillon, just as well as he knows he’s destined for many more long years alone with only the mad men and his cave painting for company. That torn scrap of their uniform from back on the Cayenne with the clumsy rendition of Papillion’s ubiquitous tattoo. Memories, as insubstantial and untrustworthy as they are. 

Papillon presses a kiss to his knee, which earns Louis’ hands sliding home into his close cropped hair, nails scratching at his scalp as he murmurs, “Come here.” The pain has abated, somewhat. The usual low grade hum compared to that sickening jolt of hurt that had woken him. Now all he wants is to feel Papillon’s stubbled face against his own, wants him close for all the time he’d gone without him, and for all the time he knows he won’t have with him, soon. And Papillon goes easily, as easily as he’d woken to take care of him; nose nudging the sweaty column of Louis’ throat as he curls up to his side. His hand finds Louis’ bare stomach, his hip, coming to rest against the skin of his waist, thumb rubbing sweetly and absently against him. 

“Better?” He murmurs, breath hot against Louis’ skin, and he shivers at the feeling of it, hand coming up to clutch awkwardly at the curve of Papillon’s shoulder. 

“Yes,” He breathes, and turns his head blindly to kiss Papillon, lips bumping the sweat-slick arch of his cheekbone before Papillon’s broad, gentle hand finds the side of Louis’ face, and he guides him down to his mouth. And Louis doesn’t kiss him like he wants to; deep and drawn out, the kissing of a man feet from the gallows. No, he kisses him just once, a brush of their lips, and whispers, “Thank you,” into the still air between their mouths. Papillon’s thumb traces his cheekbone, drawing down to the tendon pulled taut from how he’s holding Louis’ head to the side. 

“You know I love you.” It’s not a question. The flickering candlelight dances gold in Papillion’s blue-black eyes, and Louis has never been so aware of himself than in his moment. He swallows, and knows that Papillon feels it under his palm. “You know it’s not gonna be like this forever.”

Ridiculously, Louis thinks of the Louvre, of being nine years old and bored all day; tired of his mother’s bad mood, tired of his feet hurting as she’d dragged him across the shiny wood floors looking at painting after painting that had just been the _same_. Jesus, pale and bloody with his eyes cast heavenward, that perpetual eye roll to a father who had embarrassed him, or various dimly lit scenes with odd-looking men and women glowing from the centre. He’d seen _The Kiss_ that year, on the cusp of learning of his parents divorce, a few years from his own first kiss with a boy around his age. Louis felt as though he were inhabiting that painting now, under the heavy weight of Papillon’s strong, warm body, his head turned to the side, that gentle touch of lips to his cheek as his eyes flutter closed. He feels encased in that gold finery, that weighty, suffocating thing, and remembers the blissful face of the woman as he wonders how to tell Papillon that he won’t be participating in whatever scheme is being dreamt up behind those candlelit pools of his eyes. 

“Henri, I’m tired.” He says, finally, and it’s everything and nothing at once. _Tired_ , in the real sense, in that gold-cloak-weight of exhaustion settling over him, in the slumping of his eyelids. In the universal sense, in that he’s _tired_ , truly finished; done with running, done with attempting to have more than this. Papillon may have spent the last five years boiling over with plans for his next escape, but Louis himself has been doing the opposite. He wouldn’t survive another escape. It’d kill him, as sure as anything. 

Papillon releases him, and Louis relaxes away from the contortion their kiss had brought them into. “I have a plan.” He says, voice low in the dark night, and Louis fixes his eyes on the little slice of near-dawn he can see through the window. “A plan — the coconuts,” His voice is thick, syrupy and rough with sleep. He presses his face to Louis’ throat again, making himself comfortable as he sighs out, “They float, Louis.”

The image of Papillon daubed rough and fervent on the ceiling looms over them. Louis watches it watch them, thinking, _I’ll never be truly alone_.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :~~~~)!!! lemme know what you thought, it feels good to finally write these two! just a short little thing for now but i wanna get their characters straight before i go balls to the wall like usual


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